It was the Russian scientist Shubnikov who noticed that five-fold symmetry is more
characteristic of life while six-fold symmetry is more characteristic of the physical. He wrote:!
As to the alive organisms, we have not for them theory, which could answer the question what
kinds of symmetry are compatible or incompatible to existence of living material. But we can
note here that remarkable fact that among the representations of the alive nature the
pentagonal symmetry meets more often.
I think from experience and observation you will find this as true if you pay close attention to
Nature. You will find if you look at flowers every now and then you will find six petals around its
center, or sometimes as with a rose perhaps near a hundred petals, but most often you will find
there are five petals around the center of a flower. As well, even in the rose, with near a
hundred petals, they spiral in as a golden spiral, which is built of ratios of the golden ratio (
and use patterns of Fibonacci numbers. The successive ratios between terms in the Fibonacci
sequence converge on at infinity and the golden ratio is derived from pentagonal symmetry
in that if you draw in the chord of a regular pentagon, the ratio of it to its side is . And indeed
the human has two legs, two arms and a head adding up to five, or two eyes, and a nose and a
mouth adding up to five. Or, five fingers, or five toes on each hand or each foot. But for the
physical like a snowflake, there are six points that form around it giving it hexagonal symmetry.
The starfish has five arms.!
In looking at life we notice it is based on carbon which is in group 14 of the periodic table of
the elements just like semiconductor elements silicon and germanium. It is because of this that
carbon works because it means has 4 valence electrons, meaning it can form long chains with
hydrogen making organic matter the hydrocarbons, utilizing oxygen (O), nitrogen (N),
phosphorus (P), and sulfur (S). Life does not seem to be based on silicon, though, even though
it has 4 valence electrons as well because while carbon can combine with hydrogen to make
hydrocarbons such as CH4, or combine with O, N, H to make the most simple organic
compound isocyanic acid HNCO which binds H-N=C=O, silicon in the presence of oxygen
forms glass SiO2 so easily that it can not combine with the H, N, C, O, P, and S readily with
each equally so as to form functional hydrocarbons.!
It is at this point that I would like to note that carbon is element six in the periodic table giving it
6 protons, and since its molar mass is 12.01, it has 6 neutrons. It so happens that closest
packing of equal radius spheres in the plane like protons, and neutrons is six-around one or
hexagonal symmetry. As Buckminster Fuller constructed his geometry in Synergetics, he
outlined his discovery that equal-radius spheres pack in the form of what he called the vector
equilibrium, which is the cuboctahedron, which he demonstrated was the most transformable
construct and as such becomes pivotal to his Synergetics,!
I would like to suggest in light of this that since carbon has six protons and six electrons, with
the six protons determining its number of electrons (6 to be neutral) giving it four valence
electrons in its outer shell for combining with other elements (the outer shell is four and wants
four to complete an octet, such as four hydrogens each H+, that though life more often meets
with pentagonal symmetry, and here we see carbon meets with six-around-one in the plane, or
twelve-around-one in space as the vector equilibrium, or six-fold symmetry, it is because life is
built out of the physical, like carbon to make the biological, characteristic of pentagonal
symmetry. And it is here I suggest that life animates out of a dynamic structuring of the
physical (inanimate). See illustration on the next page…#